The lesson, as always, is to back up your data. That's good advice for any computer owner but the focus today is on Mac userssome 43 percent of whom either back up only a portion of their data or don't back it up at all, according to Tekserve.

The New York City-based solution provider specializing in Apple products recently surveyed about 5,000 customers to find out how and when they were backing up their data. The results, outlined in the Tekserve infographic below, demonstrate that even folks who ought to know better often don't use best practices when it comes to their most valued digital assets.

Mac users are well aware of the risks posed by hard drive crashes, hardware malfunctions, accidental damage to their computers, and accidental deletion of their files. Nearly half of those surveyed by Tekserve had lost everything at some point in their computing lives.

Yet just 55 percent said they back up all their data. What's more, of those who do, more than 30 percent are only doing it a few times a year and nearly half only test their backup solutions "rarely."

If you're suddenly thinking about cloud storage, so are many of the respondents to the Tekserve poll. Of those customers surveyed who do back up data, 85 percent are using the cloud to do itthat's actually slightly more than the respondents who back up on hard drive, though the crossover suggests smart Mac users are using both local and cloud solutions to cover themselves in the event of a disaster.

Damon Poeter got his start in journalism working for the English-language daily newspaper The Nation in Bangkok, Thailand. He covered everything from local news to sports and entertainment before settling on technology in the mid-2000s. Prior to joining PCMag, Damon worked at CRN and the Gilroy Dispatch. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle and Japan Times, among other newspapers and periodicals.
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